Eleven members in all, including eight girls, when they threw their arms around a person, even a stranger could feel instantly at home.

It was only natural the Fortneys, whose lives revolved around St. John the Evangelist Church in Swatara Township, would embrace the newly transferred parish priest, welcoming Father Augustine Giella to the community, their family, and into their home.

The year was 1982, long before child sex abuse at the hands of priests would rock the Catholic Church. That would come much later, beginning with the blockbuster reporting in Boston in 2002 and continuing with last month's jaw-dropping Pennsylvania grand jury report uncovering accusations against 300 alleged pedophile priests and more than 1,000 victims across seven decades and six diocese in the state.

The Pennsylvania report reveals a systematic pattern of the Catholic Church covering up the abuse by priests by transferring them to new, unsuspecting parishes each time complaints arise.

But back then, no one thought it odd that in the twilight of his priestly career, Giella would request a transfer from New Jersey, where he'd spent three decades, to the middle of Pennsylvania, where he hardly knew a soul.

If anything, the veteran father's uprooting late in his career only made St. John parishioners, such as the Fortneys, more determined to make Giella feel welcomed.

Well into his 50s, Giella struck a grandfatherly figure. He fast became a regular at Fortney family meals, presiding over grace and ingratiating himself deep within that big family.

Little did anyone know the Fortneys had invited a predator into their midst.

WATCH: Two of the Fortney sisters, in their own words:

By welcoming Giella, the Fortneys had unwittingly granted the priest easy access to the young girls that, according to the grand jury, he liked to watch use the bathroom, collecting their menstrual blood and pubic hair, among other forms of sexual abuse.

Giella would remain embedded deep within the Fortney family for the next decade.

Among the big brood, it was 18-month-old Carolyn Fortney who almost instantly gravitated to Father Giella. Perhaps, the trusting toddler saw the priest's signature black-and-white collar as a symbol of safety.

It was anything but.

Now age 37, Carolyn Fortney testified before the grand jury that Giella began abusing her almost immediately. But he wouldn't stop there.

Fortney family members say the priest worked his way through five of the family's eight sisters - from early teens to a two-year-old - allegedly groping and kissing them at every opportunity and obsessing on their bathroom habits, their pubescence and the onset of their menstrual cycles.

The Fortney sisters say somehow Giella was able to abuse them both in secret - including with a device attached to the toilet to collect their urine, menstrual blood and pubic hair - but also in plain sight, with his constant hugging, groping and kissing, sometimes in the presence of their parents.

Yet aside from their grand jury testimony, the Fortney family hasn't spoken publicly about any of this until now.

Carolyn Fortney and one of her sisters (center rear) comfort one another during the press conference on the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News, nine of the eleven family members, including four of the five abused sisters, are breaking their silence and revealing what is was like for one family to suffer five times the hurt at the hands of an alleged pedophile priest. Watch the family's CBS interview here.

First, Father Giella killed them with kindness, showering the Fortney sisters with candy, toys and dresses, according to the CBS interview:

"He would give us candy. He would take us out and just constantly giving, giving. Gave us stuff, bought us clothes, bought us toys. Anything we wanted," Teresa Fortney-Miller told CBS, saying she was in first grade when the priest began abusing her.

Patty Fortney was the oldest sister -- 13 and in the flower of adolescence -- when she and her sisters say the grabby Father Giella would put his hands and lips all over her - right in front of the other girls.

"He was constantly hugging me in front of them, kissing me in front of them, trying to put his tongue in your mouth. He needed to know my cup size," said Patty Fortney-Julius, who adds she knew it felt wrong but the priest's collar seemed to say it was okay.

"I would continually remind myself, 'He's my priest. He's the mediator between God and man. This is okay,'" Patty said in the CBS interview.

Such over-the-top displays of supposed priestly love even took place in the presence of the Fortney parents, Ed and Patty.

"I mean, even at our kitchen table things happened in front of my parents' face that they couldn't see," Lara Fortney McKeever, who said she was 10 when Giella began abusing her, told CBS.

But it fell to the youngest of the abused Fortney sisters to finally help stop the priest.

The former St. John the Evangelist Church in Swatara Township, which was closed in the 1990s and now is used by another denomination.

Carolyn Fortney told the grand jury and CBS she wasn't yet two when the abuse began. It would continue for the next decade, even as Giella retired in wake of a separate report of sexual abuse in Harrisburg, and returned to New Jersey.

In the end, it was a movie that helped a then-12-year-old Carolyn realize her friendly priest was really a predator and she and some of her sisters, his victims, she tells CBS:

"I was watching a movie of a priest molesting altar boys and that's kind of the day that I put it together," Carolyn said.

But it should not have taken such a young girl awakening to a decade of abuse to stop Giella.

Carolyn Fortney, now 37, says the abuse by her family priest began before she was even two years old.

According to the grand jury report and long-secret internal Diocesan letters, the Harrisburg Diocese knew the priest was following girls into restrooms as far back as April 1987.

That's when a teacher's aide working with a student in Harrisburg's Catholic school system told church officials about a middle school girl who said Giella routinely followed her into the restroom at the church rectory, where he watched her use the toilet and did "wrong things."

The teacher's aide, who worked with the district's intermediate unit, testified before the grand jury. And the grand jury report includes redacted copies of the internal Diocesan letters detailing the complaint for Harrisburg Diocese leaders.

According to those internal letters, Father Joseph Coyne, then with Bishop McDevitt school, took the teacher's complaint and then reported it, initiating a process that would alert the very top Harrisburg Diocese to Giella's alleged actions with the girl in the rectory bathroom.

Yet in response, Coyne was "instructed to do nothing in the case until the matter had been discussed with diocesan legal counsel," the internal Diocesan correspondence shows.

William H. Keeler, who interviewed Giella as a father before approving his transfer to the Harrisburg Diocese around 1980, had by then risen to bishop. Upon receiving the letter outlining the complaint against Giella, now-Bishop Keeler did nothing, according to the grand jury report, which notes:

"In spite of the detailed memorandum and this note, Giella remained in ministry and neither Keeler nor the Diocese attempted to remove Giella from ministry."

Instead, it would fall to the Fortneys to finally stop Father Giella, who voluntarily retired from the priesthood in 1988 and then moved back to New Jersey.

Fortney family members, including the abused sisters, continued to visit the retired, aging priest at his home in New Jersey. By then, some of the Fortney sisters were old enough to have their own daughters, and they brought them to Giella's place near the beach, too.

But before the priest's alleged abuse could extend to a new generation, Carolyn Fortney was beginning to question Giella's actions. And then a Fortney niece discovered alleged proof of the priest's abuse at the Giella's New Jersey home, all according to the family's CBS interview.

It was 1992 when one of Carolyn's nieces stumbled upon a box. Inside, there were pictures -- but not the kind any priest should possess.

The Fortneys say the pictures were naked photos of girls, including Carolyn. In other words, child pornography.

Confronted with the shocking find, long-trusting parents Ed and Patty Fortney reported the photos to the Harrisburg Diocese in 1992. But a Fortney sister did one better. She contacted child services, which then alerted police, according to the CBS interview.

That's all it took.

Police in Pennsylvania and New Jersey pounced on the priest.

Giella's New Jersey house was searched, and police confiscated the following as evidence: young girls' panties; plastic containers containing pubic hairs identified by initials; twelve vials of urine; soiled panties; sex books; feminine sanitary products (used); numerous photographs of girls in sexually explicit positions; and some photos depicting children in the act of urination, according to the grand jury report.

Giella was arrested and charged with child pornography and sexual abuse in August 1992. But he would die before ever facing trial.

Separately and secretly, the priest was interviewed prior to his arrest by a Church official on July 30, 1992, about the Fortney family complaints. That's when Giella allegedly confessed, according to the grand jury report and internal church documents, which state:

"Among other admissions, Giella stated that he began having contact with the girl (Carolyn) in the bath and that 'as time went on they became more comfortable with each other the embraces became more intense and involved some fondling on his part."

Giella also confessed to Church officials that he took pictures of the girl, the grand jury report states.

Meanwhile, news of Giella's arrest spawned a wave of new complaints of abuse, with "numerous" women alleging Giella had fondled and abused them when he was a priest in Hackensack, New Jersey. These women stated they had been afraid to come forward given Giella's position in the church, the grand jury report states.

Around this same time, four more of the Fortney sisters came forward with their own stories of abuse at the hands of Giella. On October 12, 1992, an attorney for the Fortney family gave the Diocese of Harrisburg official notice of their intent to sue over the abuse suffered by five of the sisters.

According to the grand jury report, the Fortneys demanded $900,000. Records show the Diocese tried to talk them down to $225,000. Eventually, the two sides reached a settlement of nearly $1 million.

But the money came with confidentiality agreements that kept the Fortneys silent until Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro convened his investigative grand jury, removing the muzzle and freeing the Fortney's to finally tell their story - some 26 years after the fact.

Decades later, the fallout is still affecting Fortneys, each in different ways.

A pair of still-dumbfounded parents are left to wonder how their kindly, Christian act of welcoming a priest became tantamount to failing to protect their family.

"It's bewildering," father Ed Fortney told CBS. "I gotta contemplate on it probably for the next 10 years, the-- to figure out where the hell I went wrong, you know?"

Added mother Patty Fortney: "We were on the inside. We didn't know... I mean, can you -- honestly think that if we knew, we would let something like that happen to our babies?"

Once close-knit sisters were left isolated by the abuse five of them suffered, but never discussed.

"For a long time, we just-- we-- it's not that we weren't close," Carolyn Fortney told CBS. "We just didn't know each other. There's always this big elephant in the room when we were together-- because we-- you know, there was so much going on that we didn't want to talk about it."

So first, the Fortney sisters told their stories to each other. Then, some went before the grand jury.

Now, they are telling the world.

In doing so, perhaps, they will help others, stopping this from happening again. After all, something good should come from all the evil visited upon one family - five sisters robbed of their innocence -- by a priest.

"I believe that there's going to be change," Teresa Fortney-Miller told CBS. "I pray that there's going to be change because nobody should live like this with this pain. Nobody should. It's every day. But I have hope now. I do."

Carolyn Fortney (left) and one of her sisters are among the estimated 1,000 Catholic Church sex abuse victims in Pa.

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